The First Blog: My Journey To Commit To The World Race

At this very moment, I’m sitting on my parent’s couch trying to figure out where to start with my story. I’ll try my best not to make my first blog super lengthy, but it might be hard for me to do because I tend to share too much detail as an effort to get a story across. I also apologize in advance for all the mechanical mistakes because I probably won’t have any of my blogs proofread. Also, how weird is it that I just said “my blogs”? lol 

If you have not yet clicked on the “About Me” button and read the very short paragraph about myself, my name is Isabel Salazar! I was born and raised in Southern California, and I am still currently living here in this beautiful, sunny state. I was brought up by two wonderful, loving Christian parents with 4 older siblings who I consider to be my best friends in the whole world. I am currently a member of my father’s church that he and my mom, along with my grandparents, started 40 years ago. Growing up as a pastor’s kid, I was so blessed to have been given parents who were so balanced in their dedication to their ministry and to their family. My parents are not perfect people but, man, do they do such an excellent job at not only living a godly life in the church but outside of it as well. They live what they teach, and because of them, I’m encouraged to be more like Christ every day.

As I kinda hinted before I’ve been going to church my whole life. I went to our church’s Christian school right when I was ready to start school as a 5-year-old, and I graduated from high school at the age of 17. Speaking from experience, as well as, hearing other people’s stories who have grown up in church their whole lives, sometimes its difficult to develop that personal relationship with God that you’ve heard is so important for your life. Parents and church leaders can do everything right to teach their kids about God and how to develop a personal walk with Him, but in the end, it’s always up to the kid to take action and make a choice to live a life for Christ. I say this because although I trusted Jesus Christ as my Saviour at a young age, and confessed that I was a sinner, and believed that He could give me eternal life, a lot of my young life did not match up to what I believed in.

During my young life, it wasn’t so much that I was rebellious or lashed out, I just had no real commitment to God. To me, it was boring to spend time in God’s Word, and I thought I knew all that I needed to know because I had heard all the Bible stories. I knew what was “wrong” and what was “right” from all the Sunday School teachings, and as long as I didn’t do any of the “bad” things, I considered myself to be a “good” Christian. I went to every church service the church held, and that was good enough for me. It makes me so deeply sad to write this, but my spiritual life continued to be like that up until my 20’s. It took a very difficult time in my life to open my eyes and realize that I needed to stop living life for myself and start developing a life with God in it.

Not many people know outside of my family that as a young teenager, God had touched my heart about missions and I told Him that I’d be willing to do missionary work if He ever gave me the opportunity. As life went on, an opportunity never came for me, but now that I think of it, based on my lack of spirituality maybe I just missed all the opportunities. That random bit of information will connect with what I’m about to write next.

After graduating high school, I headed to a Bible college in Indiana. Before enrolling, I thought it would be really cool to get a degree in missions, but I didn’t think it was an available degree for girls. I didn’t know of one girl studying for a missions degree, and I wasn’t gonna be the first girl to enroll in a bunch of classes filled with guys. So just like every other girl I knew in that college, I took on a teaching degree. I was a broke college student and not really studying what I was passionate about. At the end of my senior year, I was honestly just ready to finish college and move on to what I thought would be the next chapter of my life. I finished college in 2015, got half a teachers degree, and made plans that had nothing to do with teaching. Ironically, that summer all my plans fell through, and I was deeply saddened. I quickly became filled with anxiety and I let depression get a hold of me.

That same year, I randomly looked up “missions trips” on Google. Now, before you go ahead and think, “Ok, she was thinking straight in this situation,” in reality, I wasn’t. I was still grieving my dead plans and although it seemed like my intentions to search for missions trips seemed like a wise decision, I was actually just trying to run away from my problems. I basically thought, “I want to get away, and the only way I could pull that off without hurting my parents is to tell them I wanna go on a missions trip.”. I don’t remember how but eventually I came across the World Race website. I remember thinking it was a dream and this was my answer until I looked at the cost to go. There was no convincing my broke 21-year-old self that this trip could be possible and I immediately closed the laptop. My plans to escape my problems failed along with my future plans and a few months later I became the one thing I had no plans on becoming…a teacher…for two years!

My relationship with God during those years would reach some highs, but for very long amounts of time, it would also become non-existent. I didn’t want to let go of what I couldn’t have, and I kept putting myself in this deep, dark hole after many attempts of almost getting out. I would sabotage myself over and over again all because I didn’t want to let go of what I wanted. Throughout the next 3 1/2 years, I was just going with the flow of life. The World Race would come to my mind from time to time, but I never considered it because of my lack of spirituality and faith in God. I went through years of no direction in my life, and I wasn’t seeking it either. I was in this constant battle with God over what to do with my life. In my head, I knew that the past plans that God allowed to fail was for my own good but I struggled to believe that. My heart was angry at God, but I would never dare say that out loud. My supportive family thought I was moving on from the past, but that was because I never opened up to them about my struggles. I was embarrassed to tell them that I was still stuck in this awful pit that they thought I got out of a while ago. I would continue to live a couple of months dedicated to my walk with God and the next couple of months I would return to hurt, sin, and the things I wanted.

After so much time of going back and forth in my spiritual life, I became so fed up with myself and my inconsistency. I was tired of not being happy with my life. It was time for me to put every struggle, every hurt, every failed plan, and every sin into God’s hands. I was done with all the fighting. No more games. No more wasting time on holding on to the past that I knew full well was not good for me. I was more than ready just to let it all go and move on. It sounds pretty cliche to say that I just decided to do a full 360 out of nowhere but its the honest truth.

Please don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I don’t have days where the Enemy attacks me. I still struggle every day to choose to spend time with God in His Word and in prayers. I’m no longer in a constant battle with God, but a battle with the Enemy. I’m no longer resisting the love and forgiveness that Jesus so mercifully offers me every day. My personal battle is when the Enemy tells me that there’s no point in living a life for Christ because, at the end of the day, I’m just an imperfect human that’s already set up for failure. I fight to make a choice to die to self every day and humble myself before my God so that He can transform me into what He wants me to be. It’s a battle that I will have to fight every day until the day I die, and although that seems like a daunting task, it’s something that becomes easier and easier in the moments you realize how much peace and joy God brings when you choose to obey Him. If you’re reading this and you have not been born again in Christ, please message me, and I will be more than happy to show you how you can receive the gift of eternal life. If you already have received Jesus Christ as your Saviour and find yourself struggling in life, I encourage you to be open to letting Christ transform your life. Speaking from experience, I promise you that nothing in this world will make you feel complete like Jesus Christ’s love. He never fails, He never disappoints, He never breaks His promises, and He never stops offering His forgiveness and love to you.

After quite some time of fully rededicating my life to Christ, I wanted to invest my life in people, but I honestly was just comfortable in my day to day routine, and even today I struggle with getting out of my comfort zone and being more open when it comes to telling others about Christ. I would guilt myself and tell myself, “If I have such a lazy attitude towards reaching others for Christ in my hometown, I’m probably not equipped to go out to another country and reach anybody there.” I even doubted the day God touched my heart about missions when I was a young teen because maybe it was more of an emotion than God actually speaking to me.

I was honestly just trying to figure out the next step for my life. I somewhat have an interest in nutrition and how foods affect the body, so I thought about becoming a nutritionist. Then I thought about studying cosmetology because I like playing around with makeup and skincare. Photography would also be in that list of ideas just because I sometimes know how to work the portrait mode on my iPhone. Lol On several occasions, I would tell some friends I was going to study one of those 3 things as if it were a matter of fact. One week I would tell them I was going to be a nutritionist and another week, I was telling them I was FOR SURE gonna study cosmetology. lol

One day I sat down with my parents, and I opened up to them about wanting to invest in other peoples lives and maybe moving out to Florida to study missions at a Bible college down there. They were so encouraging that I thought it was probably meant to be. I was excited but to be honest, I was still unsure about it. I started constantly praying and asking God to give me peace about this possibility to go back to school. At some point, I lost interest in the idea altogether. I was just as unsure about it as I was when I started praying about it. It just didn’t make sense for me to go back to school for another 4 years to get a missions degree. Also, part of my parent’s excitement, besides my interest in missions again, was going back to school where I could possibly meet a guy. They’ll never admit to that though. lol

I was back to square one again. Except, this time I knew that if I did make a decision, I wanted it to involve helping people and somehow investing in their lives. I would casually talk about The World Race to some friends and family as some unattainable dream that I wanted to do, and almost every single person told me it was something I needed to do no matter what the cost. The ones who didn’t tell me that were just as stunned as I was about the price, but they thought it matched up exactly to where my heart is. I didn’t receive any discouragement from anyone except myself. Go figure. All the encouragement I received from other people made me actually think this trip could be a possibility and drowned out a lot of the discouragement I had been feeling. I started praying about it constantly, and I was ready to give the news to my parents. This time, I wasn’t going to tell them it was just an idea. I was ready to tell them that this was the next step I believed God had planned for my life. To be completely honest, I didn’t think they would take it well.

Try telling your parents that you’re planning on leaving for an entire 11-month missions trip to 11 different countries with people you’ve never met before. Along with that, tell them the price to go on this trip would cost close to $20,000. Do you have a reaction in your head yet? So did I.

Surprisingly, the reaction you just conjured up in your head was not my parent’s actual reaction. One of my prayers to God was that the only way He could make me feel at peace about going on this trip is if I had my parents 100% approval. Out of all the people I told about my decision to go on the World Race, my parents were the most supportive and encouraging. I’ve never seen them happier about a decision I made, besides the day I got saved. They were elated, and the second I told them the cost they were already talking about all the ways we could raise funds.

I applied for the World Race on December 31, 2018, just a couple of hours before the new year started. On January 18, 2019, at 7 a.m., I had my phone interview with the admissions office. Three hours later I received a call letting me know I had been accepted to go on The World Race. Although it took me a long time to listen to God’s calling to go on this trip I believe He had it all planned out. When I first heard about this trip, He knew my heart wasn’t ready and that I wasn’t where I needed to be spiritually to commit to this trip. I’m so thankful that He didn’t allow me or anyone else to encourage the thought of going in 2015 or at any time when my life was not dedicated to Him because it wouldn’t have been for the right reasons. Today, I’m writing this without a doubt in my mind that God wants me to go to 11 hurting countries that are in need of a Saviour. All I want from this trip is to be able to offer the love that God offers me and share the gift of eternal life. It will be probably the hardest thing I’ll ever do in my life, but I’m excited to have the chance to dig into Christ and His Word even deeper when the hard days hit. 

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this book of a blog. I appreciate every single one of you who read every single word, and if I could, I would probably hug all of you. Lol I’ve received some questions about how people can help support me, and I’ll update everyone about that soon. I have a  whole separate blog concerning what God has done for me in my need for financial support, and I promise it’ll be a lot shorter than this one. It should be a great one, so I’ll keep everyone posted the second it goes up! Right now, as a way of support, I ask that you, please keep me in your prayers.

All My Love,
Isabel Salazar